For example, in a system including servers in plural layers such as a Web three-layer system, a processing proceeds while exchanging messages among the servers. Such a system frequently becomes large-scale and complex, and when a problem occurred, a lot of labors and long time may be required for the handling of the problem. Then, a technique exists, in which, by collecting messages exchanged among the servers and carrying out a processing to associate the messages for each transaction (hereinafter, referred to tying processing), the proceeding status of the processing in the system is easily grasped.
As one of methods for the aforementioned tying processing, there is a method for associating messages based on tag information included in the messages. Here, the tag information is information including attributes and values of the attributes. For example, when data “8=FIX.4.1 9=112 35=0 49=BRKR 56=INVMGR 34=235 52=19980604-07:58:28 11=19980604-07:58:28 10=157” is included in a communication message by a Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol, portions in a format “AA=BB” such as “8=FIX.4.1” and “9=112” are tag information. Here, the number on the left side of “=” represents an attribute, and data on the right side of “=” represents an attribute value.
In the tying processing based on the tag information, plural messages having the same attribute value for the same attribute are associated as the messages belonging to the same transaction. Therefore, an attribute whose attribute value is the same as that in messages belonging to plural transactions is not suitable for the attribute (hereinafter, referred to a tying key) for associating the messages. Therefore, in the tying processing based on the tag information, whether or not the tying key can be identified appropriately is one of points in this technical field.
Conventionally, a technique exists to identify the tying key for associating the messages from the messages that have been associated. Specifically, a message type, character string included in the message and data flow amount when transferring the character string are obtained from the respective messages associated with each other. Then, character strings unnecessary for the tying key are excluded based on the obtained information, and an order of the character strings used for the tying processing is determined.
However, in order to identify the messages to be associated in advance, a person who has the knowledge concerning application programs activated in the system carries out a work for analyzing the messages. However, it is frequently difficult to identify the messages to be associated, by actually carrying out such a work.
Namely, the conventional techniques cannot identify candidates of the tying keys to associate the messages from among messages that have not been associated yet.